A Miracle of Catfish

“I think I detect a slight smell of alcohol on your breath, sir,” he said. “Have you been drinking this morning?”

  “Naw,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “I ain’t drank a drop.”

  The trooper nodded toward Jimmy.

  “Is this your son here, sir?” the trooper said.

  “Yeah,” Jimmy’s daddy said.

  “Where y’all headed?” the trooper said, and he turned his attention away from them for a moment to look at the ’55. He seemed to be studying it. Then he focused on them again. Jimmy felt like he was in a movie where you couldn’t tell what was going to happen next.

  “We headed to Ripley,” Jimmy’s daddy said. “We going to First Monday.”

  The trooper nodded, and he seemed to be thinking something over. He had a look on his face that said maybe he was about to do something he didn’t really want to. He moved his head past Jimmy’s daddy and looked in the back floorboard.

  “What you got under that blanket back there, sir?” he said. “It looks like it might be a cooler.”

  “Well yeah it is,” Jimmy’s daddy said, and Jimmy’s daddy was kind of wincing in the bright sunlight of the morning. Jimmy saw how gray and ragged was his father’s hair. And how nervous he was.

  And then there was that moment of truth.

  “What you got in it?” the trooper said.

  And even Jimmy could figure out that his daddy wasn’t going to be able to lie his way out of this. And his daddy must have known it, too, but it didn’t stop him from trying.

  “It’s just some Cokes and stuff for him,” Jimmy’s daddy said, nodding toward Jimmy.

  “Really? That sure looks like a beer can over there under your son’s feet,” the trooper said, and Jimmy looked down, horrified to see the Old Milwaukee can that had rolled from under the seat the last time they’d stopped. And when Jimmy looked at his daddy, his daddy’s face had turned red. And he turned his face very slowly to Jimmy. The look he gave Jimmy was one he’d given him before. It said plainly: You little shit.

  “You want to get out of the car and open it up for me?” the trooper said, in a bored way. And that was the end of the first trip to First Monday. Since they were in a dry county. Any hopes of possibly riding a buffalo that day were dashed as well.

  44

  Cleve fried up some of the deer meat the night before he took Montrel down to the river. He’d had to wake up the guy who owned the meat locker that night, after Mister Cortez had come over, after Cleve had hauled the dead deer out of the pea patch under a tarpaulin, and then he had to give the guy three of the deer for the storage fee and for helping him skin them. Montrel wouldn’t get up and help him. Laid up there next to his daughter. The little ones didn’t take as long as the big ones, and besides that, it was nice and cool in the cooler they used to hang the deer and skin them.

  Some parts had to be thrown away: a shattered shoulder here, white bones pulverized by flattened lead slugs still in there and the meat around the bullet holes bloodshot and not fit to eat, a bullet-riddled hind-quarter there. But he wound up with almost two hundred pounds of meat anyway.

  The guy who owned the meat locker lived up on Bell River Road and he’d sliced up some of the hindquarters into round steak with his band saw that night while Cleve watched. Then he took some yellow foam trays from a stack of them on his bloody worktable and wrapped the steaks nicely in clear wrap just like you’d get at Kroger except without a price tag. Cleve took eight packs home to stick in the little freezer section of his refrigerator and the meat-locker guy froze the rest of it for him in his walk-in locker. Cleve said he’d be back for some more later and the guy who owned the meat locker said he wished he’d bring a few more of those little ones since they were so tender.

  They were gone somewhere again tonight, the two of them, he didn’t know where. Somebody had worked on Montrel’s car and done something to it, but it was still getting hot sometimes. Maybe they were broke down somewhere. She’d find her way home eventually. He wasn’t worried about her. She had her razor in her shoe and she was too damn mean for anybody to mess with her. He was glad to be here almost by himself. He was going to do a little drinking and he was going to do a little cooking and he was happy that it was quiet in the house for a change, just him and the little brown-and-white spotted feist puppy he’d bought. It was sleeping on a ragged rug over by the pantry curtain. The puppy was small like him.

  He’d already made his biscuit dough and now he lifted the half pint from the kitchen table and took a fiery sip. Then he picked up an empty quart beer bottle and rolled his dough out nice and smooth. There was a clean tin can sitting there and he cut his biscuits out with that. Perfect circles of dough. They’d rise up fluffy and light, so good you could eat them by themselves. One more thing he’d learned in prison. He cut five and stood there and looked at them. He couldn’t eat any more than that, not with deer meat and gravy. Seretha might want some when she came in. He cut three more. He’d leave the rest of the biscuits and the meat on the stove in a plate and the gravy in a bowl, and if she wanted to eat, she could eat. Montrel had already turned his nose up earlier to some good fresh deer meat. Said he preferred fillay min yon, whatever the hell that was. Always talking with his mouth full. He’d get a mouthful.

  He squatted in the floor with a few scraps of the dough and the puppy woke up and walked over, licking at Cleve’s hands. He wasn’t as big as a rabbit yet and he was already four months old. Cleve petted him and gave him some of the biscuit dough and then he stood up and washed his hands at the battered sink, then wiped his fingers dry. He unwrapped the thawed deer steak from its package and put the package in the garbage.

  He had a cutting board that he used for this and he put the meat on it and carried it to the kitchen table. The steak was dark red, thickly sliced, and he picked up a sharp knife and started trimming the sinew from it, putting each piece aside as he finished with it. Made a small pile of meat. Very lean, almost no fat. This meat was from one of the little ones. He’d be able to cut it on his plate with a fork.

  He cut off a few good scraps and threw them to the puppy, who had to be constantly with him. He’d never let a dog sleep with him his entire life, but he was letting this one. He had to. There was just something about him. He called him Peter Rabbit and you could talk to him, tell him what a good squirrel dog he was going to be, how many he was going to tree, and he’d prick up his ears and seem to know what you were saying. He definitely knew his name. And if you didn’t let him in the bed with you, he’d scratch and whine at the door all night long and never would shut up. And if you got pissed off because he wouldn’t stop scratching and whining, and got up in your drawers and took him out on the back porch and closed the door on him, he’d go up under the house and get directly under the planks the bed was sitting on, and stand under there whining and yapping and jumping up, bumping his little head against the boards, and he wouldn’t quit because he knew exactly where you were somehow. He’d do it all night. And keep whining. And the other dogs would growl at him.

  Open the door and let him get up in the bed with you and he’d curl up and go right to sleep on top of the covers. Hadn’t even peed in the floor one time. Four months old and he’d scratch at the door for you to let him out. Acted like he had all kinds of sense. And loved to ride in the truck. Stand there in your lap and put his head out the window and hold on to the door with his feet. Purebred squirrel dogs like this one brought $150 at Ripley, but he’d gone down to the man’s kennel below Banner and had talked him down from $100 to $80. He’d already bought him some heartworm pills, and he’d taken him to town for all his shots. Hit the liquor store while he was up there. Save another trip to town. When you didn’t have a driver’s license you kind of had to watch it. Whitey would have your black ass back in jail.

  He grabbed a short green glass Coke bottle and started pounding the first piece of meat with the small end, a steady banging that made the fly-coated fly strips hanging from the smoked-up ceiling boards sway lightly. The puppy d
ozed. Cleve stopped and took another drink of whisky and walked over to the pantry, stepped inside the curtain, and came out with a black iron skillet that he set on the stove. He turned on the oven and poured a little Crisco into the skillet, then turned the burner beneath it on medium.

  While the skillet was heating he took a few more drinks and kept pounding the deer meat with the Coke bottle. He tenderized both sides of the meat. When he’d finished, the steaks were flattened out, much bigger than they had been, the tissue separated, fragile cutlets now. He dredged them in flour, salted and peppered them, and started laying them in the hot oil. They sizzled lightly along their edges, and bits of flour floated away into the oil and settled on the bottom and started browning. Red juice began to rise from the centers of the steaks where the white flour was dusted with black pepper. He kept putting them in as the ones frying began to contract back to their original shapes. And finally there was no more room in the skillet. They were starting to brown, but they didn’t stick. Another thing he knew how to do was season a black iron skillet. But he didn’t learn that in prison. His mother had taught him that. Corn bread. Cracklings. Catfish.

  He looked at the puppy.

  “Hey, little man,” he said.

  The puppy stretched out on his belly and wagged his stub of a tail and wiped one paw over an eye and then put his head back down on the rug and closed his eyes with a deep and satisfied sigh. You it, he seemed to say.

  When the oven was ready he greased a blackened baking sheet and put the biscuits on it and shoved them into the oven. Then he sat down in a chair that he pulled from the table and reached for the whisky. He took a sip and held it in his hand. He watched steam rise from the skillet, a wavering wisp in the dim room. He heard the thermostat in the electric oven kick on. Last winter the power had gone out which meant his electric heaters had gone out and he’d had to keep himself and Seretha warm with an old woodstove that he and she had to get back inside the house, just the two of them struggling with the heavy son of a bitch across the iced-over grass and up the back steps and in through the door, and then he had to find the old stovepipes and take out a window and run the pipe through the hole and then nail boards and plywood around it to keep the wind out. He had plenty of wood. Some of it was rotten, but it would still burn. They’d hovered around the stove trying to stay warm for three days while the power crews crept down the icy dirt roads and fixed the lines that had been torn down from the weight of the ice. He and Seretha eating soup from cans they’d open and heat on the stove. Playing Go Fish. That was before she met that son of a bitch. And they’d done all right by themselves for those three days. They had spring water and they had Kool-Aid and instant tea and even hot chocolate in those little packs. Sardines on the shelves and plenty of crackers. Hot sauce. Then he shot a rabbit down by the creek with his .22 and skinned it and cut it up and chopped up some carrots and onions and a few potatoes and poured in some canned tomatoes and put it all in a small cast-iron pot on top of the stove and built the fire up and let it simmer there for five or six hours, and that night when they ate it with some warmed-up and buttered loaf bread Seretha said it was the best thing she’d ever had. Now look where they were. He took another drink. Yankee nigger son of a bitch. Think you gonna come down here and knock up my daughter? In my house?

  He got up and turned the meat over and put a few paper towels on a clean plate. He stood there at the stove with his whisky and a fork, pushing the meat around in the skillet, checking the biscuits from time to time. When the meat was done he took it out and put it all on the plate with the paper towels and then he picked up the plate that still held some flour and he took the fork and raked some of the flour into the bottom of the skillet. He stood there and worked it into the oil with a circular motion. It started browning a little and he turned up the heat a bit. Not too much. If you burned it, you might as well just throw it out. Now if he had a can of sliced mushrooms to throw in there it would be good. Or a can of mushroom soup. But he didn’t have either, so he kept stirring. When he judged it to be nearly right he went to the sink and drew a tall glass of cold water, then went back to the skillet and poured some in. The gravy hissed and rose up in bubbles. He started stirring it hard, working it back down, adding more water a little at a time until it was thick but not too thick. When he had about an inch of smooth brown gravy made and it was gently smoking, he put the meat back into it and lowered the heat. He took the biscuits out. They were brown on top, pale on the sides. He slid them off the baking sheet onto a plate and set them on the kitchen table.

  He dipped up a little of the gravy with a spoon and poured it into a cracked saucer and set it down beside the puppy. The puppy woke and stood up and lowered his face to the saucer, and his tongue came out and he started licking it up. Cleve stood there watching him.

  “You the man, little man,” he said, and then he got another plate from the cupboard and filled it with meat and gravy and biscuits and then dipped gravy all over everything, and sat down at the table to eat. Moths were batting against the lightbulb hanging from a cord in the ceiling. Out there in the night past the windows, the things of the night called to each other.

  He heard them come in after he was already in his bed, the walls dark and the puppy silently sleeping on the covers close enough to where he could put his hand on the slick little hairs of his head. The lights rose up outside the window and he heard the sound of the motor running, and then it died and the lights went off. He lay there. He hadn’t wanted to get drunk because he didn’t want a hangover in the morning. He could get drunk tomorrow night if he wanted to. Play some. Sit on the porch and listen to her crying. Her belly was swollen just a bit now. Just enough to tell.

  He lay there in the blackness of his room and heard them come in through the front door. There was some talking and then he heard them in the kitchen. Seretha came to his door and knocked, but he didn’t say anything. She turned the knob and the door opened, but he’d closed his eyes to slits against the slice of dim light from the kitchen.

  “Pappy?” she said, but he pretended to be fast asleep. There wasn’t any need in talking to her tonight. He should have left when he had the chance.

  As soon as he got Montrel down to the river the next morning, he set out the fishing poles and the red worms he’d dug two days before and he got out a cooler of cold beer and a fresh pint of whisky. The good stuff. Canadian Club. Cleve carried the fishing poles and the bait and the whisky, and Montrel carried the cooler. They went down a cut in the bank that people had been using for years to a spot shaded by willows and covered in clean white sand. You could just barely see the spot from the bridge on DeLay Road. Cleve told him to throw his line just out at the curve, that there was a hole there where the catfish stayed in the deeper water. He squatted beside him and twisted the top off his whisky. He drank deeply and then offered the bottle to Montrel. Who took it gladly.

  Cleve didn’t even unroll his rod and reel. Didn’t even make a pretense. He just sat in the sand and watched Montrel fish and drink beer. Sat there and thought about how bad the crying was going to be.

  It was awful hot. It was only about ten o’clock. They kept sitting there fishing and drinking. Montrel’s line in the water was as unmoving as the bank he sat on. The water in the river was falling. Any dumbass knew they didn’t bite that good when it was falling.

  He kept passing his whisky bottle to Montrel and encouraging him to drink from it, and Montrel obliged him. He was sitting on the cooler and whenever he needed another beer he just rose up on his legs long enough to get the lid up and got another one and then closed it back and sat down on it again. Threw his cans in the river. Litterbug, too.

  Cleve sat there and listened to him talk. He listened to him talk about basic training and he listened to him talk about the blues clubs in Chicago and he listened to him talk about all the women he’d fucked, and the drunker he got the more he talked about how smart he was and how bad he was and how he was going to make a fortune wheeling and dealing.
Maybe even rapping, like LL Cool J. Cleve kept offering him the bottle and he kept taking it and finally when Montrel was weaving on the cooler, Cleve told him he had to go back up to the truck for a minute.

  Montrel asked him what he needed to go to the truck for, but Cleve didn’t answer. He went back up the cut like a goat, pulling himself up the loose dirt banks with his hands sometimes, and he emerged in the high grass along the top of the bank and walked through wildflowers that were fading in the heat and opened the door of his truck and reached under the seat for his pistol. He stuck it in his back pocket and then he turned back toward the river. He stood there on the bank and gazed down on what he was about to do. How it would look from there.

  When he got back down to the river, Montrel had quit fishing and was just sitting under a tree with his eyes red. He was holding what was left of the whisky in his hand. Cleve didn’t speak to him. He just rolled up the rod and reel and gathered up the bait can and picked up the other rod and reel and took it all back up to the truck. Then he went back down and got the cooler. He carried it over to the bottom of the cut in the bank and then he turned back toward Montrel. Montrel was sitting there looking at him, weaving. He looked like he was trying to figure out what was going on. And he didn’t really understand until Cleve pulled the pistol from his back pocket and walked over to stand in front of him, looking down on him, and whatever Montrel saw in that sweat-shiny black face must have been the worst thing ever, because he started to scream just before Cleve shot him in the mouth. And again. And again. And again.

  The smoke from the pistol drifted out over the river in a little cloud that soon was gone. And there was nothing to hear but the water moving against the bank, going slowly on its way down to the mouth of Enid. He, too, remembered when the white men from town had killed all the fish. Assholes.

  He dragged Montrel up under a stand of river birches and kicked some leaves and sand over him. He drank the rest of the whisky and pitched the bottle into the river and left him there. He took the cooler back up to the truck and then he drove home. Seretha was asleep. That was good.